WATCH: Direct Action to Stop a War: Sam Walton & Rev. Dan Woodhouse

‘It’s British bombs falling on Yemen from British planes. Those pilots are trained in Britain by the RAF and there are 250 British armed forces personnel serving in the Saudi militaries… We’re at war with Yemen, we’re just not telling anyone we are.’

Sam Walton & Rev. Dan Woodhouse broke into a BAE systems airbase in Lancashire to damage fighter jets and prevent their flight to Saudi Arabia where they would be used to kill civilians in Yemen.

A magistrate eventually found them not guilty of the charges brought by BAE, persuaded that their actions were an attempt to stop a greater crime and both were acquitted.

As the drum beat for war starts again in the UK, Yemen is in the grip of what the UN describes as the biggest ever man-made humanitarian crisis, and the UK continues to sell weapons to the Saudis who are leading the attack.

Below is the statement Walton & Woodhouse carried with them:

Today we intend to enter BAE Warton, to locate warplanes bound for Saudi Arabia, and disarm them. We take this action in order to prevent the export of weaponry that will almost certainly be used in war-crimes.

This day in 1996, three women entered the same site to disarm a plane being sent to Indonesia to be used in the genocide in East Timor. It is symbolic that we take action on this day to mirror the rightness of their action, which a jury found to be lawful.

Eurofighter Typhoons and Tornadoes sold to Saudi Arabia are being used on combat missions in Yemen. BAE also supplies Saudi Arabia with Hawk jets, used to train the Royal Saudi Air Force, which will almost certainly have been used in Yemen in their ground attack capacity. Typhoons and Hawk jets are known to be on site being prepared for imminent delivery to Saudi Arabia, and we have seen Saudi Tornadoes there ourselves.

By stopping or even delaying Saudi Arabia having more planes with which to bomb Yemen this action will save innocent lives and prevent war crimes. Our action is therefore necessary to prevent a greater crime. We are clear that the real crime taking place is arming despots, who frequently use arms on their own people, are known to use torture and the death penalty, and who will be using the planes sent from BAE Warton to continue to commit crimes against humanity.

Even if we do not manage to disarm a plane bound for Saudi Arabia, we hope that by openly trying to do so we will endanger future arms deals. The Saudi rulers are notoriously touchy about criticism – they don’t tolerate it at all in their country. Furthermore, they are not just buying arms – they are also buying legitimacy. That is why whenever we want to seal a big deal senior royals and government ministers must fly out and persuade them to buy weaponry. We need to do everything we can to show these sales are illegitimate and stop the government pushing for more sales. We hope that by shining a light on British complicity in Saudi war-crimes we will contribute to ending arms deals with this regime. Therefore even if we do not manage our primary aim of stopping or delaying a plane being used in war crimes through physically rendering it incapable of doing so, this action will still less directly in the future prevent war-crimes by stopping weapons being sold to those that perpetrate them.

This action has been planned over many months. We do not take these steps lightly, but we have no other option. We have been active in opposing the arms trade to Saudi Arabia for years, and in the face of wilful government denial that there is a problem with arming Saudi, including willingness to suspend our own due process of law, and complete unwillingness to consider stopping arming Saudi Arabia, we must take this action.

A legal analysis from Matrix Chambers found that the UK government is breaking international, EU and UK law by supplying arms to Saudi Arabia in the context of its military intervention and bombing campaign in Yemen. In June 2016, a Judicial Review of the government’s decision to keep selling arms was granted and will be heard in February. In October 2016 two Parliamentary Committees said, “Given the evidence we have heard and the volume of UK manufactured arms exported to Saudi Arabia, it seems inevitable that any violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by the coalition have involved arms supplied from the UK. This constitutes a breach of our own export licensing criteria.”

We probably won’t even make it to a plane bound for Saudi; we will probably get caught and either thrown off the base or arrested, but we have to try. We will carry out this action in the safest way possible and, if we are spotted, we will comply with reasonable requests from BAE personnel and not resist arrest.

We intend this action to be accountable, just as we believe selling weapons to be used in war-crimes must be. Therefore, if we are not spotted we will alert the authorities, rather than attempt to ‘get away with it.’ We fully expect to be arrested and are prepared to spend time in prison if need be. It is for the sake of accountability that we have written this statement in advance and will carry it with us on the action.